Summary of the First Three Weeks Part IV (Orvieto)

Now on to my day trip to Orvieto on the next Saturday. Orvieto is a small fortress town on top of a mountain a couple of hours from Roma. It has a pretty ancient history because of its strategic location while the Etruscan ruled Italy. Once the Romans took over the city was abandoned for all of the Roman Empire, and it only came back from a ghost town in the Middle Ages. The pope liked Orvieto and because of its papal influence this small town got a huge basilica built in. The church has some world famous frescos that I wasn't able to take pictures of. The church itself is too big to fit one camera picture of mine.

Here is another picture from the internet showing you how the front church facade is taller than the actual church itself, like almost all churches in Italy.  What it seems is more important than what it is with any church.

The sheer size of the Orvieto Cathedral doesn't even compare to the level of detail it is crafted with. Everything is done really well. The sculping on the outside columns is really detailed. Notice the columns have spiral carvings that continually go around the columns AND the columns make an arch. And since the whole cathedral is dedicated to Virgin Mary (and since most people in the Middle Ages couldn't read), the mosiacs with the gold backgrounds show the story of Mary. Let's see below...


This statue of Mary holding some guy you might have heard of is right above the door to remind everyone who the church is dedicated to. Get used to these reminders.

The church has this circular sun-like symbol that lets in light. It also has two guardians on each side if the main door...

These are the guardians to the left of the door...

and to the right of the door.

There is a lot of detail on each column. All the way up and around each column too.

After seeing the outside the tour guide took my group inside for a look. The inside was pretty amazing to see. Let's explore...


This is just a base sculpture on the feet of a table. I really like animal sculptures so I had to take a picture of this.

This is a famous sculpture of Mary holding a recently crucified Jesus with a carpenter there with the tools of the crucifixion in hand. It was all sculpted out of one piece of marble.

One of the roof sections. A lot of detail all over the various roof sections.

This is some stained glass which lines the walls periodically. Some of it has been restored as seen while the original stained glass turned brown. This is one of the few examples of stained glass in all of Italy, because churches in Italy almost exclusively have frescos.
And of course this is the opposite side of the front of the church. There is an altar where services take place behind where this picture is taken and important rooms that branch off in each direction; we were not allowed to take pictures in those rooms though.

After seeing the cathedral part of the daytrip was going to a local ristorante italiana and having a traditional italian meal. This means 6 servings of different italian foods served over a 2-hour period with dolce (dessert) being, of course, tiramisu. It starts with tomoatoes on bread, and there's pasta, beef, rice, cheese, oil and vinegar and bread, and tiramisu in that order. It was a lot. I struggled to eat but I did it. While waiting for the restaurant because our tour guide got us there a little early I saw a cat on the street. Since I like cats I take pictures of each cat I see. Here she is. I wish I could lie down on the street all day. She was fun to rub also.

Here is another cat I saw on my way back from the tunnels. There was another black cat too...

... and here he is. Hard to photograph because he ran away quickly and I had to stay back from the group a lot to get a couple of pictures.

After the restaurant the tour took us through the underground tunnels in Orvieto. The caves are a constant 15 Celsius so it was like constant air conditioning from the hot day; really amazing. The view to the outside hillside was really amazing too. Each house had its own underground tunnel with pigeon holes to house the pigeons that they used to carry messages and eat (they still eat pigeons in Orvieto according to the tour guide). The underground tunnels are more extensive than the actual city above ground because the whole "dirt" is made of highly compacted volcanic ash rock that actually chips off if you pick at it, which i did. Since digging was so easy and they people needed to protect themselves from invaders on the outside when they ventured out to get water, an extensive network of underground tunnels was built. The first room we entered was a general room where they grinded corn and was an atrium to the different pathways. Then the tourguide showed us a map of all of Orvieto. The black dots are above ground structures and the red are underground tunnels; there are more than 1200 underground caves. The tunnels were pretty cool literally and amazing to see. I like the idea of each house having a pigeon hole under it; quite clever. These are just different views of different rooms with the pigeon holes in them of course. Some the passageways to get to different rooms are very narrow, but of course that didn't bother me. Only two caves were available for tourists out of the 1200 plus caves, and some are currently undergoing restoration.


I don't even know what was up there. It was probably really narrow to go in anwyays.
More pigeon holes. Every room had tons of then and then this was just a pigeon room. Pigeons used to be everywhere.
Here is one of the underground wells. I think it goes down 50 meters or something like that.





After the tour of the tunnels we met back at the cathedral, I bought a souvenir, I took some more pictures of the cathedral (below), and we went home. To get up and down the mountiain there's this slanted rail car that goes on one rail but then divides to a roundabout for a couple of feet only when the rail car on the approaches. Back in the day they would have had a water powered car (water running on a windmill I think). Here are some more pictures...


This is a carving of Hell at the bottom of the columns, hence the glass protecting it. Definitely one of my favorite parts.
This is what's called a Joshua tree, with Joshua sleeping on the bottom and he dreams up a family tree that goes all the way up.
People in the middle ages couldn't read, so sculptures were needed to tell Biblical stories. This of course is Adam and Eve with serpent and the forbidden fruit. Finally, something I can agree with!
More architecture and sculpting, which goes spirally upward. If the pope likes your town you get one of these.
Since I leave for Paris and London for a week tomorrow, that will be the next post. The time period from this Orvieto trip to now was more sightseeing and just going to school and going out, nothing too special like Orvieto. Stay tuned for Paris and London!

Summary of the First Two/Three Weeks Part III

As I'm waiting for my pizza to heat up in the oven now seems like a good time to continue...

The way the classes work is that first there is a 3 week intensive course in just Italian, and there are two slots time slots, mornings 9:30-1 and afternoon/evening 3-6:30. At a mandatory meeting they gave us an option to choose either the morning or afternoon class. I chose the morning class as my preference. Out of 124 students, 122 also chose morning. So I got the afternoon class. My whole day is kinda gone because I get back home by 7 the earliest but oh well, at least I get to sleep in. And the walk to school is about 25/30 min and is really amazing. I pass by the Vatican (I live on 135 Via Candia, you can look it up on google maps) and of course pass by La Basilica di San Pietro (St. Peter's) which, is really big and is designed by Bernini, the greatest sculptor ever who basically designed all of Rome's masterpieces. The first part of my walk gets me right along the Vatican walls. Then once you follow the walls you get to St. Peter's.

This is one of the roads I walk on to school. That of course is La Basilica di San Pietro in the background. A closer look below... (not my pic)


Then after that I take the road down and cross the fiume Tevere (Tiber River) on Corso Vittorio Emanuele II, which is one of the bridges that crosses over the river. This is a photo I took on the bridge of another bridge.
To the left you can see the St. Angelo's Castle. Or just look below.The bridge itself has many statues on it, which are some of my favorite sites on my walk to school. I really like the lion heads at the base of the statues...
My Italain class is pretty fun. My teacher is a crazy Italian guy named Mario. Since there's only 18 of us in the class Mario knows each of us pretty well and we have a lot of fun. Since I'm taking the beginner's class it's pretty easy and I actually understand and speak Italian on the streets from time to time. The next week is where I established my routine. I get up, make myself breakfast, go do errands if I have to (like buy pasta sauce from the supermarket or buy groceries from the open air market) and then eventually I head to school. School actually goes by pretty quickly and I get home about 7. By then I'm all sweaty and I usually take a shower and always make myself something to eat. From there I can do homework and then go out if I want to. That's pretty much it for the first week, but on the next post I'll talk about my day trip to Orvieto. Stay tuned...

Summary of the First Two/Three Weeks Part II

Now its Saturday afternoon September 5th and after another interesting nigh out last night to Piazza Navona and Campo di Fiori I'm ready to continue my story...

That first week went by really quickly. We had no classes until Monday and we only had one mandatory meeting on Friday. Basically we had 3 free days in Roma but of course we were all still trying to navigate and find out the city. I definitely ate out a lot because at the time I wasn't getting tired of Italian food like I am now. I also explored the city for what I needed, including finding the "supermarket" (really small) around the corner and shopping there. I also found a kebob place as its called that offers really the only alternative to italian food (theres also one near school). Besides that, EVERYTHING else is italain food practically. I also went to the walmart-like store Panorama and bought some basic stuff like boxers. The guys on the streets mostly sell women's clothing, and I dont wan't to buy boxers off them anyways. At night I went to this club by the river called la masione, which was fun. I also went and checked out the areas with all the pubs near Campo di Fiori. That's all I really remember for that first week, along with of course meeting tons of people and getting acquanted to Roma.

And of course because my apartment is really small me and my roommates petitioned for a room change request but as I type this im still in my triple room. Oh and I started reading the book Il Padrino, more commonly known as The Godfather, but I need to keep up reading it. Its pretty good. And of course I have to mention the weather; hot and even worse humid. I get sweaty and gross practically everyday. It gets annoying going out knowing you're going to get sweaty. But strangely enough the local italians don't sweat. They just get tanned. And because of all the walking there are no fat people under 30 in Italy. none. zero. nada. People know how to keep in shape and eat good healthy food. On that saturday I went to the beach with my roommates. That was a lot of fun because for once I didn't feel sweaty and gross. Then on Monday Italian class started. And since I have to eat breakfast its to be continued...

Summary of the First Two Weeks Part I

These first 2 weeks of classes and living in Rome have been all over the place, even from last night. But first the beginning...

My flight left Monday Aug 17th 2009 from LAX at 5:30pm and then 11 hours to Heathrow, a 2 hour layover, and another 2 hour flight to Rome later, I had traveled forward in time 24 hours and I was in Rome at 5:30pm on Tuesday. Special thanks to Alex for letting me sleep on her lap on the plane. Since I was traveling with a group of 10 people from UCSD the airport stuff was pretty simple and there was nothing to worry about. Once we got outside we had to take a taxi to our hostel, which is a standard price of 40 Euro (multiply euro by 1.5 to get approx dollars ). After checking the taxi for the offical Roma logo, we had to divide everyone and the massive amounts of luggage into 3 van taxis full with luggage. And of course none of the girls wanted to sit in the front so I had to do it. It was a real adventure witnessing a taxi driver drive a stickshift by holding the steering wheel with his left hand, and shifting gears/texting with his right hand all while going fast. This got scary when we got near the Vatican with sharp turns and heavy traffic. After we all survived the taxi ride we got to our hostel that we would spend the night at because we had our official check-in tomorrow. The hostel on Ottaviano Street had a small lift and of course no air conditioning. With the hot and more importantly humid weather everyone broke a sweat moving the luggage (the guys), especially lugging the luggage up 3 flights of stairs and in the smallest lift known to man. Once we got in the hostel a young Scottish guy was running it. I remember we all went to a ristorante for dinner and got a small pizza for 5 euro. No more buying restaurant pizza for me again (2 frozen pizzas cost 2 euro from the supermarket). All I remember is watching a soccer game that night and taking a much-needed shower. Also seeing a hostel for the first time with all the beds in one room is trippy for sure. With the whole 9 hours ahead thing I slept and woke up at weird times that day in the hostel, but i dont really remember. We were all tired. At first Rome kept looking like a facade from a movie scene because it kinda looks like little Europe from the Universal Studios tram tours.

From the hostel we had to take a taxi to the ACCENT study center (where my school is) to do an official check-in. And then from there we went back to the hostel to get our luggage and go to our apartment Residence Candia. It turns out that the hostel on Ottaviano is 1 min away from Candia, so I didn't need to take a taxi with my light luggage but the girls who of course brought more luggage did. We got our room assignments in Candia and it said I have a single even though I signed up for a double/triple. One of my roommates was a friend I traveled with on the airplane from UCSD. We moved our stuff in the apartment (which is the smallest in Candia) and met a bunch of people. We met our third and final roommate soon after that also. Since the apartment is so small my "single" didnt really exist and I "moved in" to the triple room (there's only 2 rooms in this apartment anyway). My "single" room was the couch in the kitchen. But since I signed up for a double/triple I pay that price no matter what. We complained for them to move us, especially after seeing how much bigger the other apartments are, but they gave us the runaround (which they're still doing). Then me, Eric, and Zach met some girls in another apartment and along with some of our original UCSD travel group we all went out to lunch. In Rome there are little fountains that stream clean water 24/7. So naturally I didnt buy water but I just took a plastic cup and went outside and filled it with water. I haven't bought bottled water this whole trip. Every place to eat only has Italian food (read: pizza or pasta) and we soon found that out. After getting a pizza thats wrapped in paper we decided to go sight-seeing. From what I remember some girl handing out fliers who spoke enlish showed us that the stairs going down under the street was the metro entrance for Ottaviano stop, and we took that to the Trevi fountain. The metro costs 1 euro and makes an X across Rome, so its useful to go to major locations. Then from what I remember we all went to the Trevi Fountian, the Pantheon, Piazza Navona, and from there we got kinda lost but eventually walked back to Candia 4 hours after we started. Of course we all got sweaty and gross, which is the standard M.O. for anyone in the summer. I followed the tradition of throwing a coin in the Trevi Fountain meaning that I would come back to Rome. It turns out you're supposed to toss it over your head, which I didn't do. Oh well. La Fontana di Trevi also has a drinking fountain. I drank from that and the water like all fountains in Rome is cold and refreshing, especially in the heat. Since this is taking a long time (this is only the first 2 days) I have to continue this later. But thats all I remember from that day. Of course I didn't think to bring my camera but it was a fun day. I actually haven't been back to those places since, and it just turned Sept 4th now. To be continued...